Amplified Intimacies

September 11, 2008

Falling somewhere between art and design, Interstices, created by professors Jean Dubois and Lynn Hughes, brings together graduate students from Concordia and l’Université du Québec. Emphasizing collaboration and cross-pollination, members create works in parallel over the span of three years. Amplified Intimacies, the group’s second exhibition, focuses on the relationship between technology, private, and public space.

“For this particular show, we tried to do it in the spirit of the process,” says Hughes, “experimenting rather than producing a product.”

Hughes collaborates with game designer Heather Kelley in Fabulous, a video game which mixes a Hans Christian Andersen tale on vanity with references to contemporary star culture. The show also includes non-wearable clothing pieces by Ying Gao, fashion made to fold and respond to human presence.

In a playful piece by Jean Dubois, two heads face one another on a screen that projects onto the street. Viewers dial a number shown onscreen, blowing into their phones to make the heads blow bubblegum onscreen. Phone users and gum chewers can blow until the balloons touch, and stick.

Hughes predicts that Adad Hannah and Niklas Roy‘s installation will be a hit at the show’s opening. “International Dance Party” is a seemingly innocuous flight case equipped with sensors, lights, lasers, a 600 watt sound system, and a smoke machine.

“Dancing in a gallery is a very odd thing to do. It’s a space that’s not meant to have that relationship with a person,” says Hughes. “It’s about what you do in public.”

Check out Amplified Intimacies at Oboro, showing in Montreal from Sat September 13 – Sat October 18.